I believe I have some new insight. Microsoft will be "offering" player-targeted in-game ads in world of warcraft.
http://www.insidetech.com/news/artic...blizzard-games
In order to have an exclusive with MS, you've gotta go. That is why their post is so devoid of life - they CAN'T tell you why or they'd face a full on mutiny.
The really sad part is that Congress has tried twice in the last two years (Chris Dodd on both of the bills) to enable taxation of in-game "assets". I think Blizzard, bless their pointy little heads (how do they keep their ears from slamming together, I wonder?) is opening the floodgates to Pandora's box (to mess my mixaphors a bit). This is one of the most stupidly self-defeating actions in a long line of corporate insanities I've ever seen.
Are they really that incapable of seeing past their own noses? I'd have said pocketbooks, but this is going to smack them hard in that area - the backlash will be that anyone that falls under any tax authority (and the precedent will be set internationally by the US) will have their Aunt Daisy's petunias taxed off. And that will kill WoW. The funny thing is it won't be the grind, the graphics, the content or the abortion of an interface. It will be Taxes. Followed closely by Death.